Meditation: Thoughts on Ash Wednesday

Mysteries aren't only proper to divinity, but also to the things God has created in His image. But evil is not a mystery: it is an absence, a "privation" in what ought to be. It is absurd. Evil is the cavities in the teeth of the universe, the eating away of what was real and true and good and beautiful, leaving only spiritual, intellectual and moral holes.

I'm certainly not a Calvinist fulminating about total depravity, but I'm also not a "happy pagan" who is oblivious to sin. Wherever things are not the way the Lord meant them to be, there is sin, and where there is sin, there is death, and where there is death, there is evil. (Remember that line, "evil" is "life" spelled backwards?) --my message to J., 2-6-08.

"...Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, wh.[sic] will 'turn the necessity into glorious gain.'" --C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy, chapter 6, pp. 147-148.

Today I am being reminded I have been created as an agent, in the image of God, not simply as an object or event. But I am desperately ill. That image is being eaten away by sin. I am disabled. Tonight, I will be invited to name my disabilities, and to find my vocation. The ashes on my forehead signify not only my penitence but alert the world to my true condition, and the way I will be healed.

Lord,

deliver me from evil,

so that death might not erupt in me, with its fallout of sin.

Forgive me, and turn my spirit around

to Your goodness and truth,

so that Your life will surge in me,

with its abundant crop of virtue and works pleasing to you.

Let me hear your call, so that I might discover my vocation;

A vocation that leads to transfiguration.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done.

In me--in us-- on earth;

and it will be heaven.